Ask Engadget: What’s the best laptop for music production?

The support shared among readers in the remarks phase is one of the things we like most approximately the Engadget community. Over the years, we’ve recognised you to provide sage advice on the entirety from Chromecasts and cameras to drones and smartphones. In truth, our network’s know-how and insights are a reason why many of you participate within the remarks.

We simply value the time and detail you all spend in responding to questions out of your fellow tech-obsessed commenters, that’s why we’ve got decided to deliver lower back the tons-overlooked “Ask Engadget” column. This week’s question asks how to choose a new laptop for a user who’s going to be going for walks a ton of tune manufacturing software program. Weigh in with your recommendation inside the comments — and experience unfastened to ship your own questions alongside to ask@engadget.Com!

I am a student at the University of Washington. My interest is tune production the use of Cubase 9.Five Pro. All new top rate laptops in the marketplace get reviewed for “content material production” which includes video editing (and of direction, gaming), and a number of pinnacle YouTube reviewers, but there’s in no way any mention of the suitability of the laptops for song production, which calls for a special set of properties dealing with drivers and electricity control.

Music production without dropouts and clicks requires a laptop which can sustain height performance without being interrupted. There are a few tweaks to Windows 10 that can be made, but not every laptop responds well. They every should be examined. Appropriate benchmarks appear like LatencyMon and both DAWBench DSP 2017 and DAWBench VI for Cubase.

I can have enough money a pinnacle-dollar top class pc, but want something with a view to honestly paintings and is reliable. I cannot have the funds for a $3,000-plus mistake. I am considering the 15-inch Surface Book 2 (i7-8650u) with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB drive, a in addition equipped HP x360 15t with an i7-8705G (I don’t just like the keyboard at the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1) and a new Dell XPS 15 9570 with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

Asking questions within the Steinberg Cubase forums hasn’t been effective. The equal is real of different boards such as Reddit, even though you may sometimes get a LatencyMon benchmark. The first indication is that the brand new Dell XPS 15 9570 fails LatencyMon right out of the container.

I would really like a evaluation of those top class laptops for song manufacturing in Cubase using the ideal benchmarks and check projects in order that I can make an informed decision.

Terrence O’Brien
Terrence O’Brien
Managing Editor

Oddly, I’ve been inside the marketplace for the same tool — a new computer devoted to song manufacturing. While I don’t have specific revel in with Cubase, I can offer the following recommendation, which have to be fairly applicable throughout the board for song production desires: Avoid “u” CPUs, as they may be normally designed for cell or low power usage (and can be extra competitive of their throttling, thereby inflicting dropouts).

Ideally, you need an i5 or i7 chip with an “H” at the quit. While more RAM is constantly higher, you must generally be okay with 16GB. You in reality, simply, need an SSD with as a minimum 512GB of garage; having samples and DAW on a neighborhood SSD is certainly precious.

Though you express concern approximately drivers, they in most cases turn out to be a situation when dealing with outside audio interfaces, as many PCs use the identical included audio chip. But in case you’re severe about the use of your computer for song manufacturing (and if you’re dropping $three,000 on a pc, you ought to be) you shouldn’t be counting on the inner audio.

So this shouldn’t be a primary situation anyway, because you ought to be shopping for and using a separate external audio interface. In that case, the question is much less about the laptop and extra approximately how your OS, your DAW and how that specific interface interacts.

Focusrite, as an example, doesn’t officially aid something older than OS X 10.10 at the Scarlett 2i2 and would not help Windows eight at all. Their drivers also tend to deliver substantially better latency on OS X than it does on Windows 10. Their drivers also perform better in Cubase than they do in Ableton or ProTools. But the difference in latency among an HP and a Dell system with similar specs might be negligible at nice.

However, a number of the specs you’ll want will rely on the type of music you will be generating. For instance, if you’re basically into electronic tune, the usage of VSTs and plugins on the pc, your CPU is greater essential. If you’re recording a band or live units — conditions where you are processing actual audio — RAM and SSD ability are going to be bigger priorities.